Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Thursday, May 27, 2010071 LPD to the Gulf of Aden.For the past six months a persistent rumor has been "floating" around suggesting that the PLAN is planning to send their largest surface combatant, the 071 Yuzhao LPD, to the Gulf of Aden to aid the on-going international anti-piracy operations.

This recent PLA Daily photograph (here) of a PLAN Z-8 helicopter pilot leaving his 1-year old son to "train for a long range" mission adds credence to the rumor. The only PLAN combat vessel capable of deploying two medium-sized helicopters is the Type 071 LPD.

Having a 20,000t Command and Control mother ship will not only enhance on-station time for the Chinese task force, its two Z-8's also have a significant range advantage over the lighter Z-9 and Ka-27 currently serving onboard the Chinese task force. The Z-9 is designed to drop a 4-member SpOps team to a distressed ship. On the other hand, the Z-8 is capable of delivering 20+ fully armed troops.

6-29-2010's CCTV report confirms that the 071 LPD (998 Kunlun Shan) will participate in the PLAN's 6th task force deployment to the Gulf of Aden.

You can catch the CCTV report in youtube (here) (thanks HHG for the upload)

The flotilla with more than 1,000 personnel, including Navy special forces troops, is to relieve the fifth flotilla, which has been cruising the waters off the Somalia coast for more than three months.

The amphibious landing ship Kunlunshan, destroyer Lanzhou, and supply ship Weishanhu of the fifth fleet, will escort vessels sailing through the region.

It is the first deployment of the amphibious landing ship Kunlunshan, with a displacement of 18,500 tonnes, on an escort mission.

The previous five Chinese fleets to the Gulf of Aden have escorted 2,248 Chinese and foreign ships in 213 batches in this region, which has been plagued by pirate attacks, since December 2008.Editor: Wang Guanqun

A regiment of the Nanjing Military Area Command (MAC) of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), reputed as the new generation “electromagnetic blue army”, has participated in 103 electromagnetic confrontation exercises over the past five years.

The regiment has been equipped with new radars, unmanned aerial vehicles and other advanced equipment in recent years. To make the new equipment generate combat capacity on the basis of giving full play to their performances, three sets of simulation drilling systems have been developed, and 11 new tactics for electromagnetic countermeasure-based operations summarized. Furthermore, the troops in the regiment are encouraged to do studies on the combat concept, application of operational tactics and technical countermeasures for the “blue army”.

In field confrontation drills, by means of various kinds of tactics used in electromagnetic operations, the “electromagnetic blue army” conducts strong electromagnetic interference to informationalized equipment of its rivals under both static and dynamic conditions to test the anti-jamming abilities of the new equipment. The data obtained in the tests were important parameters for the interconnection among various information systems.

Over the past five years, the “electromagnetic blue army” has staged confrontation exercises with combat units of the Navy, the Air Force and the Second Artillery Force (SAF) of the PLA in and outside the Nanjing MAC.

On June 18, the National Defense Mobilization Committee of the Beijing Military Area Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) organized a military-civilian joint exercise on military operations other than war (MOOTW) in the suburb of Shijiazhuang, capital of China’s Hebei Province. The exercise includes such subjects as emergency mechanism starting-up, military-civilian joint decision-making, rapid projection of strength, rapid unfolding of rescue, secondary disaster’ elimination and social stability maintenance.

The exercise was jointly participated by the professional forces specialized in quake-rescue, chemical-defense rescue, medical treatment and epidemic prevention from the PLA, militia and reserve force as well as professional rush-repair forces from local departments of public security, fire fighting, water, electricity and gas.